And There Came Reverence
Ben Bublick

At age twelve, most kids don’t know anything about the lives of their parents. Actually, children seem to ignore the past lives of their parents because they don’t see a point in acknowledging times that don’t directly relate to their lives. At age twelve, on a brisk September Sunday morning, my mom dragged me out of our orange-tinted, steamy sunroom to teach me how to make a bed. Imagine my enthrallment. I idly rolled off the couch and stumbled down the hall, following the archetypal leader into my stylishly bland room. All of the materials for the procession were arranged in scrutinized piles on my bed. My mom peered at me in maternal euphoria. It was time. She had prepared to show me a couple of things today.

“See, Ben, the eggshell mattress is already in place, saving you a step.”
“Yeah, Mom, I see,” thinking that this was already getting cumbersome.
Then, out of an unidentifiable oblivion, my mom began telling me about how her mother taught her to make a bed.

My mom didn’t grow up in the fortunate environment I did. Her home was scattered. It was a place to live, but it wasn’t the sanctuary that my mom needed for comfort. Her room didn’t represent her interests or display her thoughts and predilections on decorated walls and desks like mine does. She wanted me to able to differentiate between the lifestyles, appreciating the comparable opulence of my room to hers. In a stealthy whisper, my mother told me that I would understand and become empathetic someday.

Next, mom directed me to take the other end of the fitted sheet. In partnership, we gingerly positioned the sheet around the rounded hubs of my bed. My mom paused after finishing her end of the task and proceeded in her instruction.

She described the life of my grandmother, my mother’s mother, a gentle and kind Polish émigré, who had to face the hardships and iniquitous impositions of the heartless Hitler and his Nazi regime during the Holocaust. My grandmother had to toil endlessly, with malnutrition and lethal disease imminent to arrest, afraid of being murdered or beaten every moment. When she went to rest in bed, my grandmother was joined by groups of hungry, hoarding rats, looking to make enemies. Facing the deathly black walls, her clammy hands trembled in fright. Her teeth chattered when she cried alone in bed, iced by the harsh metal bars underneath her bare, fragile back. I glared around my room several times during mom’s explanation and bubbled on the verge of maddening outrage. My mom, knowing I needed one of her emotional remedies, sauntered out of my room in her skin-colored home stockings, poured me a short glass of cool, virgin cranberry juice cocktail and handed it to me with a sly wink.

“Take a sip and help me with these sheets, James Dean.” My mom had made a clever, uncharacteristic joke. I was wearing a hugging white t-shirt and retro black jeans, rolled up at the ankles, dangling over a pair of fresh scented creamy Converse All-Stars. “Ha, ha, mom,” I chuckled as I flexed unobtrusively. We adjusted the sheet so it fit on my bed contentedly and folded the top portion with a crisp whoosh for a homey, domestic appearance. My mother found this point of the bed-making process expedient for connecting my grandmother’s life with her own and moreover, my own.

My mother was born soon after my grandmother had escaped from the cruel oppression of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. I began to imagine how my grandmother’s placenta must have been filled with putrid breadcrumbs and stale fruit rinds. I’d just been given an overly extensive and complex version of the infamous birds-and-the-bees discussion and was beginning to form precocious thoughts.

“Focus, focus,” I kept ordering myself. I reacclimatized myself to the conversation and heard how, prior to boarding the ship destined for America’s Ellis Island, my mother was delivered tenderly. My mom remembered how grandma had said my mom was beautiful and beaming happily. Grandma had been filled with excitement and anticipatory goodness as a result of my mother’s angelic glee.

“Go get the bedspread out of the dryer, Beanie.”
“Ok, mom.” Beanie is my nickname. I complied with her wishes and compacted the fluffy cover on my head into an oblong ball looking like a Haitian water transporter. My mom smiled and snatched the profusion of clothed feathers off my head. She exhibited a casual method of stretching the bedspread over the entire frame and allowed it to conform to the bed’s whims thereafter. I observed the phenomenon in wonder. Playfully, I leapt onto the bed and made snow angels in imprecise formations and finally smoothed the comforter out properly. Goose feathers fluttered through the air as I calmly marveled at how far we had come along with the bed.

“I never had all the amenities you have been divinely given.”
Telling of how the U.S. government sent her and her mother to Muskegon, Michigan and of how they sustained themselves, she tried to recall struggles and their life together. Food was scarce and Michigan freezes coolly, but my grandmother’s optimism had shielded the disparagement of reality. In addition, my grandmother’s rose garden was a sweet nectar that basked them in pleasantry and soothing splendor. Other than the rose garden and fabrication, my mother’s surroundings were dingy and infested. She lived in subjugated poverty. My mom had to hop and trip over various trinkets and clanking, insignificant garbage. My grandmother saved and reused everything because previously, she had nothing.

“Simply stuff the pillows in the opening of the pillowcase and plop on the bed,” she indicated in an erudite fashion.

I expeditiously inserted the pillows in with suspenseful hands, awaiting the newfound details of my mom’s past. Tossing the pillows on the bed, I limply fell to the floor and sat Indian style, looking up at my mom.

“No, that’s not right. Please place the pillows on the bed, soft, like this.”
“Come on, come on,” was circulating through my impressionable head.
My mom sat down and told me why she decided to show me how to make my bed. She said I was getting older and that it was time for me to begin higher-level communication with her and my peers and to really embark on a personal expedition that she had been expecting me to go on.

“How does bed-making correspond to life-making,” I savagely interjected.
As I consummated bed-making for the day by folding my two straw-fibered blankets, my mom informed me that she only fussed at me to keep my room clean and organized all the time because she wanted to live in a home that compensated for her past sordid living conditions. She chirped glowingly that “cleanliness is next to godliness,” quoting one of her favorite progressive authors, Maya Angelou. My mom then advised me to always be “pertinacious,” to look that up, to get a good education and to think before I speak out of respect for other’s feelings. She kissed me lovingly, patted the bed in approval and floated out of the room with irrevocable confidence. I knew she took pride in her maternal work.

While I adjusted the scorching bath water according to my preference, I inhaled a relieving breath of simmering pancake batter from the kitchen and recognized the ringing toll of our terracotta teapot. Unusual tears tumbled down my face. I felt sure that my bed was made right and that I was destined to discover why the caged bird sings.